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Endeavour Hills

Endeavour Hills is a residential suburb 33 km south-east of central Melbourne and 4 km north-east of Dandenong. Before becoming a suburb it was known as Doveton North, separated from Doveton by the reservation for the Mulgrave Freeway.

The housing development was first planned in 1970. As this year was the bicentenary of Captain Cook's landing in Australia, the name Endeavour Hills was proposed in recognitiion of his ship, the Endeavour. Many of the streets are named after members of the ship's company.

In the early 1970s Endeavour Hills was mostly open space. In the north-west the Dandenong Police Paddocks were grassed woodland with the scouts and guides reserve at Baden Powell Drive. The Seventh Scout Jamboree had been held there in 1964-65. Adjacent to the Mulgrave Freeway reservation there was the Doveton North technical school and a small housing estate. Eastwards there was the Churchill Park golf club and the Gleneagles golf course. By the end of the decade the James Cook primary school had opened, the Gleneagles estate was under way and about half the suburb was under residential development. The Catholic church was in the course of construction and its primary school scheduled to open in 1981. It was in the civic centre of the suburb, where the drive-in shopping centre (1980) and Council library also opened.

During the 1980s three more State primary schools (Chalcot Lodge, Mossgiel and Southern Cross) and a second Catholic school campus (1985) opened. Most of Endeavour Hills' built-up area was completed, with only the Thomas Mitchell primary school (1991) and the Eumemmerring (now Gleneagles) secondary college to be built.

Endeavour Hills' landscape starts in the foothills of the Lysterfield ranges and descends through undulating land to level landscape at Hallam. It may once have been Doveton North, but its private housing estates have been deemed superior to Doveton's Housing Commission estates.

Endeavour Hills' census populations have been:

Census date

Population

1976

1916

1991

23,938

2001

25,863

2006

25,006

2011

24,574

Further Reading

Berwick-Pakenham Historical Society, In the wake of the pack tracks: a history of the Shire of Berwick, now the City of Berwick and the Shire of Pakenham, 1982

From bullock tracks to bitumen: a brief history of the Shire of Berwick, 1962